Utilizing the ubiquitousness of the Internet and the power of consumer persuasion, subscribers are waging war against a perceived anti-Israel bias in the coverage of the Middle East crisis by major U.S. newspapers.
Rallied by religious leaders and grass-roots organizations, readers of the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times are canceling their subscriptions in protest, and they are apparently having an impact.
StandWithUs.com, an 8,000-member group of concerned Christians and Jews born out of a living room gathering of “regular moms,” rabbis and community leaders a year ago, now declares a temporary truce in the boycott against the Los Angeles Times. The conciliatory gesture follows a lengthy meeting yesterday between Times representatives and the head of StandWithUs, during which the group’s concerns were presented.
“We’re going to give them a month’s time to review our comments and implement changes. After that, we’ll reassess our position, and if we feel they haven’t improved we may reinstate our call for a boycott,” explains the group’s vice president, Allyson Rowen Taylor.
StandWithUs joined a community-wide, synagogue-driven mobilization of Times readers to stage a one-day protest on April 17 in observance of Israeli Independence Day. As WorldNetDaily reported, the paper put a “rough estimate” of a thousand on the number of cancellations called in that day. Communications Director Mike Lange stated those cancellations “represent less than one-tenth of one percent of our average daily subscriptions.” When asked if the protest would impact future editorial decisions, Lange told WND, “We don’t base editorial decisions on this sort of action.”
StandWithUs disputes the Times’ figure and posted an online survey to try to gauge the impact of the various ongoing boycotts.
“Our estimates from the survey and from talking to people at all the temples is closer to 7 – 10,000,” Taylor told WND. “It’s embarrassing for the Times to report that number. … If only 990 people cancelled their subscriptions, they wouldn’t have called the Israeli consulate to have him set up a meeting with us. We’ve shamed them. Their credibility is on the line.”
‘David and Goliath’ coverage
While others stump for a permanent boycott, StandWithUs called for a 10-day protest after a 200-page content analysis of the paper’s Mideast coverage in the last year failed to elicit a satisfactory response from the Times. Sixty-five community leaders signed a cover letter to the document detailing examples of a perceived anti-Israel bias.
“An analysis of your paper’s reporting of the conflict in the Middle East reveals that you are promoting a subtle form of incitement against Israel and the United States of America, putting us at risk,” the 65 signers declared. “An analysis of articles in the Los Angeles Times demonstrates the promotion of anti-Israel sentiments through the placement of photographs, size and color of photographs, theme of photographs, captions, headlines, omissions of facts and unbalanced reporting.”
Among the examples cited in the analysis:
- “One-sided reporting is evidenced by the fact that the Times has not made an effort to reconcile Arafat’s (or other Arab/Muslim leaders’) statements to Western media with his ongoing communications to his own people… A glaring example of your lack of objective reporting of the news is your ommission of Arafat’s statement to his people on Dec. 18, 2001, in Ramallah where he once again glorified martyrdom. This speech was the antithesis of the speech offered to the world audience … on Dec. 16, 2001.
- “The newspaper has accepted and promoted the Palestinian Arabs as the ‘Davids’ in the biblical David and Goliath story. The paper has shown cute Palestinian children with slingshots in their hands to advance this theory. … A recent photo … did not even remotely correspond to the story that followed the picture.
- “Your reporting … appears to be to solicit sympathy for the Palestinians, portraying them as ‘victims’ while omitting and misrepresenting the danger to Israeli citizens… We have found no articles that enunciate the fact that there are five million Jews in an area that is surrounded by 200 million Arabs who reside in 22 nations hostile to Israel and who are aligned with the Palestinian Arabs. We do not see the paper drawing the connection between the arms shipments that they continually receive from hostile neighbors such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, or through Egypt.
- “We also do not read that the paper is investigating Arafat and his purchases of tons of ammunition while simultaneously soliciting funds from
America and the EU to ostensibly improve the living conditions of the Palestinian people. - “As our government freezes the bank accounts of Hamas’ Holy Land Foundation, which has been sending millions of tax-free, tax-deductible dollars to finance and encourage the murder of non-combatant Israeli citizens for years, … the paper stresses the alleged humanitarian aspects of the foundation.
- “The paper has opted to subjectively legitimize the leadership of terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah by labeling them ‘military commanders,’ ‘militants,’ and ‘officials’ as opposed to terrorist leaders.
- “The paper has repeated the phrase ‘cycle of violence’ on a regular basis, which implies moral equivalence between the murder of non-combatant Israeli citizens sitting on a bus bench, teenagers at a discotheque … or pizza parlor … with the bulldozing of empty buildings which are illegally built buildings which hide tunnels used to smuggle weapons.”
“We feel they try to paint Israelis as a demonized group and don’t ever present the agenda of the Arab countries and the Palestinians to eliminate the state of Israel,” summarizes Ruth Smith, spokeswoman for StandWithUs.
In the first week of the subscriptions boycott, Times Editor John Carroll issued the following statement:
“The Times currently has a large staff of reporters and photographers chronicling the conflict in the Middle East. Our goal is to provide coverage that is both fair and complete. We feel that we serve our readership best by covering all aspects and points of view. Some readers may take objection to specific articles, but I am confident that, over time, careful readers of this newspaper will get a full, balanced account of these unsettling events.”
One WorldNetDaily reader, who prefers not to be named, says others at the Times are not as confident in their coverage as Carroll. The reader related his experience when he called to cancel his family’s subscription a couple days after the one-day protest:
“At first the person handling the call was all business, asking name, address, etc. Then, the person asked if I would tell them the reason. I said, ‘too liberal, too biased, too anti-Israel, too pro-Palestinian, etc., etc.’ The person responded, ‘We’ve been getting a lot of that lately, and we’d like you to consider staying, because we’re changing our format.’ I said, ‘So now you’re not going to be biased, you’re not going to be liberal?’ The person giggled, and didn’t really have anything to say, but again asked me if I would like to stay on. I replied, ‘I tell you what. When I hear that it’s changed, I’ll come back.'”
Repeated calls to the Times inquiring about the reported format change, and seeking an updated estimate of subscription cancellations have not been returned.
Taking a bite out of the Big Apple
Across the country, the New York Times finds itself under similar assault by angry subscribers.
The New York Post reported last week that three prominent Jewish leaders called for a boycott over what they feel is biased coverage against Israel.
“I told my congregation at services … that I am no longer buying the Times, and I’ve urged them to do the same,” said Rabbi Avi Weiss at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in the Bronx, according to the Post.
In a letter to the editor of The Jewish Week, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein called on subscribers to suspend their subscriptions for one month starting today to commemorate Jerusalem Day. He also suggested Jewish organizations suspend placing obituaries in the Times.
“It is not enough to send letters and e-mails to the Times; one has to act in accordance with one’s views. The Times will get the message, just as it did last fall when thousands suspended their subscriptions from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur,” wrote Lookstein.
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, or CAMERA, a non-denominational, educational, pro-Israel organization, released a study last week analyzing the New York Times content between late March and early April.
Among CAMERA’s findings:
- “Only three of 10 terrorist attacks that targeted Israelis … received headlined, front-page coverage. … By contrast, 14 news stories about Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield (not including American or Arab reaction or news analysis) were carried on the front page.
- “Palestinian terrorist attacks were responsible for scores of deaths and hundreds of wounded Israeli non-combatants, but aside from initial news stories that may have quoted eyewitnesses, there were only two stories about victims of Palestinian terrorist attacks and no stories about relatives of the victims or survivors of the terrorist attacks. … Even the horrific Passover attack that killed 28 Israelis and wounded 130 prompted not one follow-up story. … There were five human-interest stories exclusively about Israeli suffering of which only two focused on victims of terror attacks. By contrast, there were 14 human-interest stories focused solely on Palestinian suffering or on terrorists and their families.
- “The images and captions displayed on the pages of the Times reveal a total lack of balance. … The Times presented a total of 18 photographs of Israelis (not including those of Israeli leaders). Of these, seven presented the aftermath of suicide bombings and only two appeared on the front page. In sharp contrast, there were 45 photographs portraying Palestinians as victims, Israelis as aggressors, or Palestinian suicide bombers and their families, 11 of which appeared on the front page (not including photographs of Palestinian leaders). In addition, there were 19 mostly large photographs of pro-Palestinian demonstrators versus only one small photograph of an Israeli solidarity demonstration in New York, despite the fact that numerous pro-Israeli demonstrations had been staged across America. In addition, there was a large photograph of Israelis demonstrating against Israeli military actions.
- “In addition to the lack of balance in size, number, and placement of photographs, the captions attached to them were often distorted or misleading, including the use of editorializing, lack of context, or selective information added to the photograph. … An April 3 caption under a large front-page photograph read: ‘Israeli soldiers ordered a Palestinian to raise his shirt during a search yesterday at a checkpoint near Ramallah.’ No context is provided for the soldier’s request. The caption implies that Israelis are gratuitously humiliating the Palestinian. A less prejudicial caption might have read: ‘Israeli soldiers checked a Palestinian for concealed weapons at a checkpoint near Ramallah.'”
Defending the Times coverage, Catherine Mathis, vice president of corporate communications provided WND with the following statement:
“We are highly conscious of sensitivities surrounding coverage of the Middle East. Our determination and our staff’s assignment, as always, is to cover all sides thoroughly, dispassionately and with scrupulous impartiality. Our correspondents and editors are chosen for their demonstrated ability to carry out that mission; they are the most experienced and fair-minded journalists in our business. If occasionally the facts of a particular news situation seem likely to provide more satisfaction to one side than to others, our policy is to restore the balance promptly in our overall coverage.”
Mathis told WND the impact of the boycott is “small” but declined to quantify either the number attributed to protest over Mideast coverage or even the total number of subscriptions cancelled. Mathis did admit the total number of cancellations in the last week was “higher” than the cancellations in the previous week, but declined to elaborate.
As subscribers continue their war against media bias, one longtime foot soldier offers her moral support. In a letter to StandWithUs containing her donation to their cause she writes, “My late husband (God rest his soul) cancelled our subscription to the Times in 1970. I have not renewed my subscription to the … paper since.”
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